Key People

Friedrich Paulus -
German field marshal; defied Hitler’s orders and
surrendered to Soviets at Stalingrad

Operation Barbarossa

The initial German invasion of the Soviet
Union was known as Operation Barbarossa.
It began on June 22, 1941,
after months of delay and years of planning. The general goals were
to gain more land for Germany, control the oil fields of Azerbaijan,
and exterminate Bolshevism—the radical Communism that Vladimir Lenin
had installed in Russia during the Russian Revolution. Moreover,
Hitler wanted to exterminate the “racially inferior” Russian people
from Leningrad, Moscow, and the rest of the western USSR while pushing
the rest of the population eastward beyond the Ural Mountains.

Despite the fact that the USSR was far larger than Germany
both geographically and militarily, Hitler believed that the country would
collapse quickly, after a brief show of German force. The German
advance was organized into three main thrusts: one through the Baltic
region, toward Leningrad; one through central Russia, toward Moscow;
and one to the south, toward Kiev and the Black Sea coast. This
resulted in a front line nearly 1,000 miles
long, which necessitated a gargantuan Axis force of approximately 4 million soldiers,
3 million of whom were German. Although Hitler hoped to complete
the operation by the onset of winter in late 1941,
Germany’s conflict with the Soviet Union would continue for most
of the war.

The German Air Attack

Much like Hitler’s previous invasions, the
attack on the USSR began by air and concentrated on Russian frontline
airbases. The Soviet Union had a substantially larger, though less
modern, air force than Germany, and destroying it was
crucial to Germany’s success. The German attack began in the predawn hours
of June 22 and continued
without letup nearly all day. Though estimates vary
significantly, the USSR lost between 1,200 and 2,000 aircraft—approximately
one quarter of its entire air force—the first day. Most of these
aircraft were destroyed on the ground, parked at their airbases.
Over the next week, the Soviets lost an additional 2,000 to 3,000 in
battle. The setback was devastating and would take the USSR a long
time to overcome.

The German Advance

The German attack caught the Soviet military
completely off guard, and its forces were not positioned to respond
effectively to the attacks. In its confusion, the Soviet high command
issued contradictory orders, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin hesitated before
ordering decisive action. In the meantime, German forces advanced
quickly across the Russian countryside. In little more than a week,
by July 1, the Germans had pushed 200 to 300 miles
into Russia and captured the major cities of Riga and Dvinsk in
the north, Minsk in the central region, and Lvov in the south.

Reasons for the USSR’s Vulnerability

Even prior to the invasion, Stalin had made several decisions
that severely weakened his country’s ability to respond to the German threat.
First, during his infamous purges of the 1930s,
Stalin had most of the Soviet military leadership murdered or sent
to labor camps in Siberia. Because this group included
many seasoned officers, Russia’s military leadership
in 1941 was
much less experienced than it had been only five or six
years before. Second, Stalin had resisted early recommendations
by his military leaders to mobilize forces along the western border
or to take steps to protect air bases from attack. Stalin’s motives
in this matter have never been clear.

The Russian Response

Despite these setbacks, the USSR still put up a formidable
fight. Unlike most of the enemy forces that the Germans had encountered in
western Europe, the Soviet troops tended either to retreat or fight to
the last man—not surrender. Within days of the invasion, the Soviets
organized small partisan groups and “destruction battalions” and
sent them behind enemy lines to interfere with German efforts in
numerous ways.